At the Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD) from May 29 to May 31, 2026, technology issues were on everyone’s lips. Contrary to what some had suggested, defense officials in attendance were not merely paying lip service. Conversations on the vulnerability of our critical underwater infrastructure began at the 2025 edition of SLD. Just a year later, countries launched an initiative to establish guiding principles and best practices around the protection of critical underwater infrastructure: the Guiding Principles for Underwater Infrastructure Defense Exchanges. This was a promising reminder that conferences like SLD are not simply venues for political grandstanding. Anyone who has participated in discussions with multiple countries would appreciate the difficulty of getting a room full of cooks to agree on the same broth.
There will soon be another opportunity for countries to make strides in tech governance; this time on the application of AI in the defense domain. To date, other discussions on the governance of military AI have been initiated by individual states or organizations outside a formal UN process. The UN “Informal Exchanges on AI in the Military Domain”, which will take place in Geneva from June 15 to June 17, 2026, have a distinct genesis – they will be convened under a resolution that was supported by an overwhelming majority of countries at the 80th UN General Assembly (UNGA) last year. Tabled by the Netherlands and the Republic of Korea (ROK), the resolution won the support of 167 countries at the plenary session last December, with only five voting against and five abstaining.
In the multilateral circuit, these voting numbers are worth their weight in gold. They reflect states’ willingness to give the UN a strong and clear mandate to hold discussions on military AI governance. Ironically, this makes the upcoming UN informal exchanges the most formal UN process on the governance of military AI to date.
That these meetings are designated as “informal exchanges” is not a coincidence. Unlike formal debates where recordings and transcripts will be made available online, informal consultations in the UN format are typically not televised. There is also no requirement to produce any deliverable for the upcoming informal exchanges other than a “factual summary” to the UN Secretary-General. Considering their usual format, these informal exchanges could well amount to nothing more than an unrecorded discussion between states.
To appreciate the politics that will shape and constrain the upcoming “informal exchanges”, we will need to look back at the 80th UNGA consultations between delegations over the draft resolution.
In the early stages of open, informal multilateral discussions at the 80th UNGA First Committee, several delegations openly questioned what they were being asked to sign up for. One delegation pointed out that the exact nature of the meetings proposed by the penholders was unclear, while another delegation pressed for clarity on the actual modality of the meetings. Possibly in a bid to keep costs low and to make the meetings as inclusive as possible, a suggestion was made in the room for the meetings to be a series of webinars. The webinar format seemed oddly specific and received a lukewarm response. Finally, the penholders proceeded with the suggestion made by some delegations to use the term “exchanges”. This seemed broad enough to appease most delegations.
The real challenge for the penholders, therefore, lay in managing the sentiments of the major powers. During the multilateral discussions, some delegations sought confirmation that the informal exchanges would not prejudge future national positions or approaches toward military AI governance. One delegation also sought to clarify that these informal exchanges should not have any official status. Some expressed the view that discussions on military AI governance could be held on existing UN disarmament platforms, in particular, the UN Disarmament Commission. The US delegation also repeated its position not to over-regulate AI nor engage in global governance over AI at the UN.
In the days leading up to action on the resolution, several delegations were still trying to appeal to the major powers to support the three-day informal exchanges, arguing that they were reasonable and modest. Yet Russia and the US ultimately still voted against the resolution.
One perspective is that these “informal exchanges” constitute a formal multilateral push in the global conversation on military AI governance. One could even argue that there is a critical window of opportunity for countries to make a breakthrough. Another less optimistic perspective is that these meetings were limited by design to be nothing more than a casual conversation on military AI governance. How Russia and the US choose to engage with the informal exchanges, assuming both countries participate, will also be significant.
To stand a fighting chance of delivering real results, the UN informal exchanges will need to reflect an alignment of humanitarian principles with geopolitical realities.
Any international discussion is bound to have a certain degree of political grandstanding, but countries must refrain from the temptation to engage in humanitarian grandstanding. Discussions about how to address humanitarian concerns can, and should, be both meaningful and realistic. Practically, countries will need to actively involve their defense officials in this conversation, not only their diplomats and lawyers. Their involvement would ground the conversation in operational and technical realities, which is critical if defense establishments are to collaborate in substantive areas like testing and evaluation. Without the actual policy owners and end users of military AI in the room, countries also cannot signal clearly and credibly about how military AI can and cannot be used.
Should the latter trajectory materialize, however, it need not signal the end of the conversation on military AI governance. While the UN process was meant to offer a dedicated space for these discussions, alternative platforms such as major defense conferences could well provide the same opportunities with a higher chance of success. Within the UN context, defense applications of AI have been treated as a disarmament or arms control issue. This may be conceptually problematic in putting AI, which is a technology or capability, into the same basket as all the other weapons that the UN has regulated (e.g. biological and chemical weapons). Moreover, the disarmament and arms control tradition at the UN is to restrict and regulate. For defense establishments aiming to rapidly adopt, scale, and harness the benefits of AI, this is an unpalatable proposition to begin with.
Conversely, discussions on AI governance at major defense conferences would look quite different. Rather than dwell on what and how best to restrict the application of AI, these discussions would likely focus on practical areas of cooperation that would start small and eventually grow bigger. Like-minded defense establishments would also have a baseline of understanding on the resources they are prepared to commit. While it is less clear how such discussions would be institutionalized or structured, this could give like-minded countries the flexibility to determine the pace and format of their conversations on military AI governance.
In today’s climate, every opportunity for dialogue on AI governance is important. If we are serious about building meaningful guardrails in defense applications of AI, we will need to be hard-nosed, not high-minded.
Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are those of the writer and do not represent the official positions of the Singapore Government or the Singapore Ministry of Defence.
Cheyenne is a Senior Analyst in Ministry of Defence of Singapore, and an alumnus of the 2025 UN Disarmament Fellowship. She holds a Master’s degree in Security Studies from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and a Bachelor’s degree in History and International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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